In The Garage

IN THE GARAGE

Back in January 2016, after my 1996 Discovery lost her battle with rust, I desperately needed to find another 4x4, and quickly too, as Muddy Madam and I had just set up The Mud Life website. At the time, the irony of having a 4x4 and outdoor website and NOT having a 4x4 wasn’t lost on us, so the search commenced.

In no particular order my list of basic requirements looked something like this:

• No more than £4,000

• Reliable - I need it to work when required

• Good off road

• Good on road

• Parts easily available

• Not precious like L322 Range Rover

• Proper 4x4 system with low box

I wanted to find a 4x4 that could handle the rough stuff, and still be comfortable for long, interminable motorway excursions, as there are plenty of weeks when I’m all over the country on new car launches or at shows, and don’t have access to a press car. Admittedly, this is usually down to poor planning on my part.

Cutting a long story short, I discounted Land Rover products as I wanted to The Mud Life to be more generic, not just another green oval appreciation website, although a Discovery 2 was very tempting.

Having scoured the internet for a month, searching for a new-to-me 4x4 that made me feel all fuzzy inside, without success, I began losing the will to live. I arrived at the conclusion that I might be better off searching for a set of hens teeth in a bucket of rocking horse poo.

Anyway, cutting another long and boring story fairly short, I posted a thread on the UK’s Toyota Hilux Surf forum - www. hiluxsurf.co.uk, bemoaning the fact there was hardly any Surfs for sale anymore.

It didn’t take long for a forum member to link another selling type website that had listed a rather tasty 3rd Gen that was only an hour away. That fuzzy feeling returned.

Muddy Madam and I headed over to Ormskirk to have a look, and not only was the Surf genuine, but more importantly for me, so was Paul, its current custodian. He insisted on showing me its service records, and discussed at length what he’d done to it over the 2 years. I was smitten, but more importantly, so was the ever doubtful Muddy Madam, so we bought it, and I was once again a Toyota Surf owner.

Because she was our second Surf, and Surf still rhymes with Smurf, she was christened ‘Deux Smurf,’ and straight away was put into Mud Life action. There were blasts to the NEC in Birmingham, trips to Wales and the Lake District and before I knew it we had covered nearly 1000 miles in just a couple of weeks.

Although perfectly road legal, the General Grabber tyres that came with Deux Smurf had sadly past their sell by date when it came to off-roading, so a new set of tyres was required. This of course brings with it a whole new headache. I have to admit that I’m a bit of a closed book when it comes to tyres, as I’ve had BF-Goodrich All-Terrains on my last four 4x4s, and they’ve been exceptional.

At time of writing this, my KM2s have been on Deux Smurf now for almost 2 years and 20,000 miles and I love ‘em. I’m not going to go into details here as my review of them is elsewhere in the mag. Not wishing to tempt fate, but the only thing to nearly fall off

The first expenditure came the day after we got her home. Although the windscreen wipers did their job, they did so in anger, they squealed with every single wipe they made, so I invested in a pair of Bosch Aerotwin wipers.

I

was her exhaust back box, it rattled when idling, so when I was at Milner Off-Road on an errand I bought a replacement. As it was last November I had quite a lot of work to do, so I wrote a list of jobs I wanted looking at and dropped Deux

also replaced the rear wiper, with a complete unit from Roughtrax. The wiper is attached to the arm with 2 very small screws and is quite a fiddly job to replace. You need to be careful not to thread them as they don’t come with the wiper, so you better not drop them either!

Three months on and we’d covered just over 2,600 miles and she was still faultless. Having said that, fuel wise, I’m averaging 310 miles from a brimmed tank. This may seem quite poor, and actually, it is, but she only has a small tank, plus I find it quite difficult to stay at 56mph on the motorway as she’s so quiet and stable. To date, the worst I’ve had is 218 miles per full tank and the best has been 372!

Smurf at my mechanic’s place, Steve Wilson Autos in Bolton. He changed the oil, and everything else you would expect for a winter service, removed the tow bar drop plate, tightened the air con belt and fitted the exhaust. There are many positive things I could tell you about Deux

Smurf, but one in particular is was how good the heater is. After 3 weeks of not being used during a cold spell, Deux Smurf was blasting out lovely warm air within minutes of driving off. This is better than some of the new cars I drive, and not bad for a 22 year old!

Overall I’m incredibly happy with Deux Smurf, but I can’t take all the credit, we were lucky, she’s had 2 very fastidious UK owners who’ve kept her in fabulous condition since being imported into the UK.

So what’s next? Not much if I’m being honest, I’m happy keeping her fairly standard but I’ll be making some practical and sensible additions that’ll make her better off-road and more comfortable on it.